


That Life I Can't Have

by flipflop_diva



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Comfort/Angst, Consensual Mind Control, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Natasha Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Protective Steve Rogers, Red Room, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:29:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5949213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sees the three of them together. She wishes for things she shouldn't wish for. But she doesn't deserve that life. It's not who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



> To Jain — I was going for your prompt of one person pining for the other two, but this sort of took on a life of its own, and this happened. I really hope you enjoy! Happy Valentine's Day!

Natasha was lonely.

It took her a while to realize that was even what she was feeling. After all, loneliness wasn’t really an emotion she was used to. There was no place for that in the Red Room. Life back then had been a series of training and missions, of learning to rely on yourself and no one else. She had been taught that everything she did, she needed to do it alone, and it was a lesson that had stuck with her. 

Clint was the first person she had ever missed. That had been unfamiliar, too, when it first happened, an ache in her heart when he was long gone that she didn’t understand. He had laughed at her — nicely, gently, never mean-spirited — when she had told him about it, and then he’d hugged her and told her it was okay, that she was allowed to want things and to miss things, and that he had missed her, too.

Loneliness, though. That was a new one. And the worst part was it was entirely her own damned fault.

She’d had them, both of them. It had started a few weeks after Hydra fell. She’d had every intention of leaving the city — of leaving the country — to go look for herself, but instead she had found herself sneaking into Sam’s apartment in the middle of the night, crawling in bed between him and Steve. Neither one of them ever said a word about it, not even to tease her, although she knew the first time she did it she nearly gave them both a heart attack. Instead, they just slipped their arms around her and held her against them when the nightmares and the memories became too much.

Somehow that had led to just never leaving. She brought them New York bagels and made room for herself on the couch, and one day she realized half her clothes were in Sam’s closet and Steve had bought all her favorite foods at the grocery store. And just as neither man said anything about her middle-of-the-night drops ins, neither one of them ever actually said anything about her living with them, but they never tried to kick her out. Instead they kissed her on the forehead and then on the lips, and when they all ended up in bed together a few weeks later, a tangle of lips and naked limbs, no one said anything about that either.

Four months after that, they moved into Avengers Tower together, and even Tony didn’t give them as hard a time as they expected him to when they told him they wanted to share a floor. Maybe he was too surprised to be as snarky as normal — although that seemed unlikely — and he did manage to smirk and make lewd gestures. Thor and Banner didn’t seem concerned at all, and Clint just elbowed her in the ribs and told her he was happy for her.

Being with Steve and Sam was nothing that Natasha had ever expected, but it was nice. She wouldn’t call it a relationship — of course she wouldn’t. In her experience, relationships were not things she would ever be allowed to have, were not things she would ever deserve to have — but it didn’t need a name. It worked for them, and it was all that mattered.

Until the night she messed it all up.

The team had finally found the scepter. Clint had gotten injured, and they’d realized there were two enhanced twins working for the other side, but their mission — the one they’d had since they’d all moved into the Tower — was finally finished. 

It had been time for a celebration — a pre-celebration before what Tony called the official celebration — all six of them plus Sam and Maria drinking and toasting and laughing until Sam had taken her hand and then Steve’s hand and had very obviously led them both to the elevator, the sounds of the others hooting and hollering behind them not bothering any one of them at all. They had somehow managed to control themselves until they reached their floor, and then there was no holding back. By the time they stumbled into the bedroom, falling on to the bed together, clothes had long been shed and Natasha was already halfway to her second orgasm. 

It was after the third orgasm that it happened. She was between them, Sam pressed against her from behind, his arm wrapped around her, stroking gently between her legs, even his soft touch sending shudders through her oversensitive body. His lips were against her neck, and she could feel his warm breath on her skin. Steve was on her other side, his hands cupping her face, his lips tenderly kissing her like she was made of glass.

She felt warm and content and something akin to safe, lying there between the two men who meant the world to her. Maybe they had felt it too, that peace between them all, that sense of belonging, of having whatever it was between them just be right. 

Steve let out a soft breath against her face, his blue eyes soft and warm and so full of tenderness. 

“I love you,” he murmured. 

He might as well have punched her in the stomach. She froze, her entire body seizing up at the words. And suddenly she wasn’t there, in the Tower, in their bedroom. She was six years old, bleeding on the floor, screaming as they dragged the little girl she had just been hugging a few seconds earlier out by the hair.

_“What have we told you, Natalia? Love is for children. And you are not a child. You are a warrior.” The face of her handler glaring down at her. And then a shot of pain as the boot kicked her in the stomach, causing her to gasp for air. Tears streaming down her cheeks. A hand tangling in her hair, jerking her upright. More harsh language, all in Russian. “Silence! Or we will really show you what happens when you defy us!”_

She blinked at Steve, her mind whirling. He didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, kept kissing her like she was worthy. But no … it wasn’t right. It was all _wrong_. This was all wrong. He couldn’t love her, _they_ couldn’t love her. Loving her led to bad things, to horrible things …

She was out of bed before either man knew what was happening, on her hands and knees, scrambling to find clothes, any clothes, she could slip on. 

“Natasha?” Steve’s voice cut through the echoes in her head, but no, she couldn’t look back at him, couldn’t stop. 

“Natasha, wait!” Sam, now. Desperate and almost afraid.

She paused at the door, not looking back at them, struggling to stay standing, to keep breathing. 

“I can’t do this,” she managed to make herself say, her voice calm and steady and sure, just how she had been trained to speak, like they had taught her all those years before. “I don’t love you.”

She slipped out of the room before the sentence was fully out of her month, waiting until she made it into the hall to run.

She had nowhere to go, no one who could help her. She found an empty room on an unused floor and locked the door behind her. She sat there for maybe hours, Steve’s voice in her head, battling the echoes of her past. 

When she could take it no longer, she bowed her head, let herself cry for the first time in as long as she could remember.

In the morning, she asked Tony for a floor to herself. 

•••

They had tried a couple times to talk to her, to get her to talk to them, but she was good at avoiding people when she needed to. She stayed away from them at the celebration party, flirted with Bruce in front of them. If they thought she just didn’t want them, maybe they would all be better off.

And then Ultron happened and they stopped trying to talk to her. They stopped looking at her. Steve even went back to calling her Romanoff.

“It’s better this way,” she whispered to herself as they fought Ultron. “It’s better this way,” as they recovered at Clint’s house and Steve wouldn’t even meet her eyes. “It’s better this way,” as she lay in Ultron’s cage, wondering if they were even going to look for her. “It’s better this way,” as she fought side by side with Steve and he looked at her like she was a teammate and not the woman he loved. “It’s better this way,” as they moved into the new Avengers bunker, and Steve and Sam went off the first night to be together, a picture of love, and she sat alone in the dark and reminded herself of who she really was.

“It’s better this way,” as Steve and Sam finally brought Bucky in, finally completed the mission the three of them had worked on together since Hydra fell. “It’s better this way,” as she watched Bucky grow stronger and more relaxed every day, as he fit back into Steve’s world more easily than she ever had and found a spot in Sam’s that was just as perfect. “It’s better this way,” as the three of them spent days and nights together and none of them ever looked at her the way they used to. 

Now, though, on this day, on this ordinary average day, all she could do was stand, almost frozen in place, and watch them. It wasn’t much different from any other day, but something about them … they looked so casually intimate together, the way they were walking. Steve in the middle, his arms draped around both Bucky and Sam. Bucky had his human arm around Steve’s waist, his head on Steve’s shoulder. Sam kept bumping into Steve with his hip, maybe on accident, maybe on purpose. Every once in a while, the sound of their laugher would catch on the wind, and on this day, this day when she had finally realized she was lonely, it was like a dagger in her heart.

That could have been her. She could have had that. She did have that.

Except she didn’t. Because it hadn’t been real. It hadn’t been anything but a child’s fantasy. Things like that weren’t for people like her. Because her past was too horrible and her ledger too red, and they were better off this way, together, without her. She would only hurt them, destroy them, because that’s who she had been made to be. She knew that. If there was one thing she knew, she knew that.

“It’s better this way,” she whispered as she watched them go, forcing out the words, as if putting them into the world would make her believe it.

“Natasha.” Rhodey was behind her, his voice gentle. She hadn’t known he was there, but she was trained too well to react in surprise so instead she pretended not to hear him, even though she knew he knew she heard everything. But she couldn’t look at him. Not now. She knew what he was going to say — that it wasn’t too late, that she could fix things with Steve and Sam and Bucky. But she couldn’t. And she couldn’t talk about it. Couldn’t watch it. Couldn’t let anyone tell her she could fix it. She couldn’t. It was too late.

Instead, she turned, pushed past Rhodey, headed back inside, back down the hall to her room, blinking quickly against the pinpricks in her eyes. She forced herself to breath, to think about something else, to focus on training and not a life that was never meant for her.

_It was better this way._


	2. Chapter 2

Steve was happy.

He hadn’t been truly happy in so long, he almost didn’t recognize it at first, that lightness in his step, the warm feeling in his chest, the knowledge of knowing two of the people he loved most in the world were beside him, hand in hand with him, loving him back.

The only thing that wasn’t perfect … 

Steve shook his head at himself that morning as he pulled his uniform on and heading down to the training gym. Yes, he was happy, but the one thing that wasn’t perfect was a huge thing, not a minor obstacle he could fix in seconds.

Natasha. He still loved her, still cared about her, still thought about her almost every minute of the day, still wished things were different.

It was his fault really. He should have known better. It was no secret that Natasha was skittish. Lord knows it had taken her long enough to even admit they were friends. Relationships, trust, love … those were things that were all foreign to her, all things that terrified her more than guns, robots or aliens wrecking havoc on earth. He should have known better than to tell her he loved her. 

He had seen her eyes, in the split second before she was running away from them. Saw the confusion and absolute terror. 

They had had her. She was part of them. They had loved her, and she had loved them as best she could. He knew she had, even if she had never said it. And he had gone and blown it all.

Sam had wanted to follow her. Steve had wanted to apologize. They were both willing to beg and plead and do whatever it took. 

But she was too spooked and the damage was too much, and then Ultron happened, and by the time the dust cleared, it was all too late. They couldn’t force her to want to be with them, so they did their best to spend as little alone time with her as possible. It was just easier that way. (It wasn’t, but it was easier to lie to themselves that it was, one habit of Natasha’s they finally understood.)

And then they had found Bucky.

It wasn’t that he had forgotten about Natasha or loved her any less, but Bucky … Bucky had been his world for so long, and then he had been his mission. Bucky — the first person he’d truly loved, the first person who had truly understood him. And then there that person was again — not entirely the same, not without a lifetime’s worth of scars, but he was there. Growing stronger, more confident, more himself with each passing day. And most of all, Bucky still loved Steve as much as Steve still loved Bucky.

They slipped back into each other’s lives, not seamlessy but easily. And Sam fit right in, too. And now Steve had them both, these two men, who were his world, who he’d die for, who would die for him.

He was happy, and it was selfish of him to want more. She didn’t want them, and it wasn’t his, or any of their, place to convince her otherwise. 

But there was one thing that was odd. He had noticed it from the start, the way Bucky sometimes stopped, his eyes following Natasha, staring at her as though she were something he needed to study. He would watch her, sometimes look like he wanted to go to her, but then he would just shake his head and go back to whatever he, Steve and Sam were doing at the moment. 

He was doing it again right now. The three of them — Bucky, Sam, Steve — were sitting in a huddle on the floor, cooling off from their workout. Natasha was across the room, her back to them, punching and kicking at the gym bag. She seemed more agitated than normal — Steve could tell by the sound of her punches, just that much harder than normal, and the way she hopped more times than usual from one foot to the other before she kicked — but they had been on a communicate-only-when-it-concerns-the-team basis for awhile now, so if something was wrong, he knew she wasn’t going to tell him. 

Bucky, though, was staring at her intensely, his metal fingers actually gripping at the mat they were sitting on, tearing through the sturdy material. 

“Buck?” Steve said. He reached out, place a hand on his friend’s arm, got no reaction. He frowned. “You with me? Buck?”

Still no reaction. Steve gripped Bucky’s arm a little harder, shook it slightly. “Bucky? Buck?”

Sam reached out then, too, put a hand on Bucky’s leg. “Hey, man,” he said. “We’re right here.”

That seemed to do it. A small shudder ran through Bucky’s body, and he finally forced his eyes away from Natasha to turn in Steve’s direction. Steve didn’t think he was seeing him, though. He looked far away, his eyes focused on something that wasn’t really there. 

“She was so small.” 

The words were spoken so quietly Steve almost thought he was imagining them at first, but Bucky continued, his voice strangely monotone. “I remember her hair. Red like fire. She was like fire. I was proud of her.”

Steve stared at his friend, his mouth suddenly going dry. What was Bucky telling him? He couldn’t be …

“She was so small,” Bucky said again. “So small.” He gasped then, nodded like he was confirming something to himself, and then the words Steve never thought to be afraid to hear were coming out of his mouth. “I called her Natalia then.”

It was like the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. Steve couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. 

It was impossible. She would have said something.

She would have. She would. She wouldn’t have lied to him about this. Not about this. She wouldn’t have lied.

His eyes darted over to the woman in the corner, still kicking at the bag like it had personally affronted her. His jaw tightened, his muscles tensing.

If she had lied to him …

Sam’s cool hand on his arm was the only thing that kept him in place, kept the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach from exploding into something he would forever regret.

“She might not remember, Steve,” Sam said calmly. Steve turned, met his eyes. Sam continued. “You told me you think the Red Room messed with her head. She might not know.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, and he turned to look again at Natasha. “There’s only one way to find out.”

•••

He waited twenty-four hours before he cornered her, in the training room after the others had left for dinner. She was wiping the sweat from her brow when he gently pushed her back into the wall, mostly so she couldn’t run from him if she wanted.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was cool. 

“I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to give me an honest answer. No lying.”

She frowned at him, but she nodded. Almost imperceptibly but he saw it.

“Okay.” He kept his hands gently on her shoulders and peered into her eyes. “Have you met Bucky before?”

Her brow creased just slightly. “You know I have,” she said.

“Not in Odessa. Before that.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me!” He couldn’t help the rise in his voice. Natasha, though, only looked confused.

“I’m not lying.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure I’m not lying?”

“Are you sure you haven’t met him?”

This time she nodded. “I’m sure.” She frowned. “What is this about Steve?”

“He says he knows you.”

“Bucky?”

“Yes, Bucky. Who do you think we’ve been talking about?”

“Maybe he knows _of_ me.”

“No. He knows you. He remembers you.”

“From Odessa?”

“From the Red Room.”

He felt Natasha stiffen under his hands before the second word had even finished leaving his mouth. The expression in her eyes died, as if nothing had been there. A wave of guilt swept through him.

Shit. Sam had been right. She didn’t remember.

“That’s not possible,” she said. Her voice was detached, emotionless.

It was too late to turn back now, though. She deserved to know. “I think he might have trained you.”

“No.”

“Natasha.”

She jerked out of his arms, shoving past him with all her strength. Caught off guard, he stumbled into the wall. “Nat!” But she was already gone.

“Damn it.” He ran his hands through his hair. That hadn’t exactly gone as planned.

•••

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting now that the truth was out there. Natasha still avoided all of them, much as she had been doing before. Bucky still watched her when they happened to be in proximity to each other, much as he had been doing before, but as far as Steve knew, the two of them didn’t talk. And Sam and Steve didn’t press Bucky for any more details.

Part of him didn’t want to know. He knew Bucky had gone through hell, and he knew Bucky had done horrible things, but he didn’t know how he’d feel if he found out Bucky had done horrible things to Natasha. But maybe Natasha didn’t want to remember either. Maybe no one would ever have to know.

He shouldn’t have thought that. Not more than five seconds after he did, Rhodey was running into the dining area, slightly out of breath.

“Cap,” he said, “There’s something you need to know.”

Steve paused in between bites of his sandwich. “Something going on?”

“I heard Natasha and Wanda talking.”

“Yeah?” Sam piped up.

“Natasha wants Wanda to use her mind control powers on her.”

“What?” Sam said.

“I think Wanda agreed to do it.”

The distance between the dining area and the roof, where Rhodey said he’d seen them going, had never felt so long. With every step Steve took, it only seemed to get further and further away.

This was his fault. She wanted to remember Bucky. But Wanda’s powers caused consequences that couldn’t always be seen. He knew that from experience, and he didn’t want Natasha going through that again, even willingly. There _had_ to be another way.

He burst through the door to the roof just in time to see the last of the red light from Wanda’s hands vanish into the night air. Natasha was in front of him, facing him. Her eyes were already glassy, distant. She stumbled forward, trapped in a memory from another time.

Wanda heard the footsteps. She turned, her face giving away her shame.

“She told me too,” she cried out.

“And you listened to her?” Steve shot Wanda a look, but he didn’t have time to deal with her now. Natasha was still on her feet, stumbling sideways, swaying as she moved. 

He was by her side in an instant, scooping her up into his arms bridal-style. And then he was running back down the stairs, down the hall to the medical ward.

“I need you to sedate her!” he ordered a nurse as he rushed into the closed-off area, depositing Natasha on to a bed. “Now! We need to pull her out of this.”

“Will that work?”

Wanda. He hadn’t even realized she, Sam and Rhodey had followed him.

“If she’s not conscious, she can’t dream,” Steve said as Natasha’s face contorted in something that looked like pain and she twisted on the bed. “Hurry!” he yelled at the nurse.

A few seconds later, the needle was in her arm. They all watched, waiting, as she writhed in pain, her eyes still unseeing, her breath shallow.

“Why isn’t it work --”

Her eyes slipped close, her body going limp and still. Steve let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, reaching for Natasha’s hand and squeezing it. He turned around to look at Wanda, who was pale and shaking in front of Sam.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said.

•••

He was still holding one of Natasha’s hands and Sam was holding the other when she regained consciousness. He knew she had by the tiny movement in her fingers, but the rest of her body remained completely still, her eyes still closed.

He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “Talk to us, Nat. It’s okay.”

Her eyes opened. She focused first on Steve, then on Sam, then on the ceiling. “It’s my fault.”

“What’s your fault?” Sam asked. 

“I tried to run away.” She blinked, the only sign of life on her face. Steve felt his stomach clench in anticipation. “They caught me. They were so angry. They were going to beat me, but James …” She paused, blinked again. “The Winter Soldier … he stepped in. Picked me up. He protected me.” Another pause. “I never saw him again.” One more pause. “But the other girls said they heard him scream.” She shifted her eyes from the ceiling back to Steve. “I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes for a second, took in her words. He didn’t like to think about what Bucky had been through. He didn’t like to think about what _Natasha_ had been through. 

He opened his eyes, squeezed her hand. “None of that was your fault.”

“He’s your friend. I got him hurt.”

“You were a _child_ ,” Sam said.

“I was a monster. I still am.”

“You’re wrong,” Steve told her. They’d had this discussion before, just once. He’d told her the same thing at the time. She didn’t believe him then either.

“Am I?” she said. “You didn’t see what I did.” 

She closed her eyes and stopped talking.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha felt sick.

Some of it was the leftover effects from Wanda’s spell. It had hit her hard the first time it happened. It was worse this second time, even though she had expected it, had asked for it even. Steve had stopped it before it got as far as it would have otherwise, but it didn’t matter. She still felt weak and like she was floating in a fog. 

It was more than just that, though. 

She had woken up to find Sam and Steve sitting next to her, holding her hands, looking at her like they hadn’t looked at her since she had run away from them. And then Bucky had come in, and he had looked at her like he looked at her in her memory — like she was more to him than just a trainee. And in that moment, she could have stayed there with them forever, letting them hold her and look at her like that.

But she had seen again firsthand who she really was — an assassin trained from childhood to be ruthless and merciless. When people cared about her, they got hurt. Bucky had gotten hurt then, Steve and Sam had been hurt this past time.

She was never meant to love.

So she had pretended to fall asleep, had waited till they’d left her alone, until they had walked out together arm in arm, a perfect picture of love and companionship and belonging, and then she had slipped out of bed, out of the hospital ward and back down the halls to her room, where she was now, curled up in the middle of her bed, wishing it could all be different.

•••

She must have fallen asleep, because the creak of the floorboards woke her, but before she could even reach for the guns hidden under the mattress, Sam’s voice stopped her. “It’s okay. It’s just us.”

She blinked in the sudden brightness of her room, trying to focus on the three figures in front of her. They all moved forward, Steve and Sam taking a spot on either side of her on the bed and Bucky standing at the end, just peering at her the way she had caught him peering at her for weeks. At least it all made sense why now.

“Why are you here?” she asked when it was clear none of the three were going to say anything.

“We wanted to talk to you.” Sam answered.

“And you couldn’t do that in the morning?”

“We wanted it to be private.”

She let herself smirk at him for that. “And you thought I’d invite an audience?”

“It’s no secret you’ve been avoiding us, Nat.” Apparently it was Steve’s turn to talk.

“Not avoiding,” she responded instantly. “Just staying out of your way. And it’s not like you’ve been inviting me to dinner.”

“We wanted to give you space,” Sam said. She shrugged at that.

“But not anymore,” Steve said. “We talked.”

She let her eyes narrow. “ _You_ talked?”

“The three of us,” Steve clarified, gesturing toward Sam and Bucky, as if she didn’t know those were the two others he meant. 

“It’s up to you, Natalia.” Bucky spoke up now, and her eyes darted toward him. No one had called her that in so long. She hadn’t wanted them to. But when he said it ….

“What’s up to me?” she asked, her voice suddenly having a hard time coming out.

“What happens after this,” Steve said.

“After what?”

“After we tell you,” Bucky said.

“After you tell me what?”

She turned her head to look at Steve. He picked up her hand. She was tempted to jerk it back, but his touch, his skin on hers …

“I love you,” he told her in that god-awful genuine way he had, his eyes boring into hers.

She felt Sam reach for her other hand, and she turned. 

“And I love you,” he said.

Bucky was reaching for her, too, but not touching her. A smile was on his face. “And I love you, too. Or I did. Before. And I think I still do.”

“We can make this work,” Steve said.

She looked at him again, studying him, searching his face, making sure they were really offering what she thought there were offering. But she knew they were. A chance to have it back, what she and Sam and Steve had had before, but with Bucky this time too. A chance to have something she was never supposed to have.

But she was never supposed to have it for a reason. And she couldn’t hurt them. Not them, not again ...

Her voice felt stuck in her throat. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him to stop looking at her that way, like he thought she was deserving to be part of them. She couldn’t have that, have him, have them …

“I’m not who you think I am.” She finally found the words, forced them out without missing a beat.

Steve’s hand let go of hers, came up, cupped the side of her face instead. He was still looking at her with those eyes of his.

“You’re exactly who we think you are,” he said softly, and she felt her heart sink at his words. “But you’re not anything like _you_ think you are.”

She blinked at him. “Steve …”

“You’re not a monster, Natasha. You’re a good person. You deserve good things.” His other hand came up to cup the other side of her face. “You deserve us, even if you think you don’t.”

“But I …”

“Shhhh.” Sam’s voice. Behind her this time. Sam’s arms sliding around her. And then something cold, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

“We love you,” Steve said. “And we know you love us too.” 

Bucky’s metal finger slid down her cheek, pressed over her lips. Steve leaned forward, pressed his lips against her temple. Sam’s arms tightened just so around her.

“You deserve us, Natasha,” Steve said. “And someday you’re going to believe that.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. So she just nodded, then closed her eyes, let them lay her down on the bed, felt them around her.

She knew in her heart she didn’t deserve them, but she couldn’t make herself leave. Instead she found herself saying something she never thought she’d say.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay.”


End file.
